1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a film handling mechanism for a photographic printer which provides for film movement at the gate in all directions in the plane of the film, including rotation, but which has only one surface-to-surface movement, thereby minimizing the number of tolerances and the sum of the tolerances between the emulsion surface of the film in the printing position and the surface to which the printer lens is mounted.
2. Description Relative to the Background Art
The nearest prior art known to us is U.S. Pat. No. 4,616,926 issued Oct. 14, 1986 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,603,966 issued Aug. 5, 1986. These patents illustrate one type of printer with which the film handling mechanism of the present invention is useful. In these patents, the mechanisms for locating the film frame to be printed require several relatively moving surfaces, for example, the sliding surfaces of elements 44, 46, and 70 in U.S. Pat. No. 4,616,926. The additive manufacturing tolerances involved in those parts renders manufacturing much more expensive and the results less likely to produce the required sharpness in the final print.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,452,526 discloses a step-and-repeat alignment and exposure system for photometric printing of a reticle upon a semiconductive wafer, using multiple stages and plural axes of motion and rotation.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,953,123 issued Apr. 27, 1976 discloses a transport mechanism for successively positioning micro-images disposed on one of two film cards in an illumination path of a viewer printer. The film cards are mounted between glass plates which are movable by motor driven cable and spring arrangement forward and sideways.
Cropping is a photographic printing technique in which a photofinisher effectively eliminates a portion of a photographic original, e.g. color negative film image, in order to print only a specific portion of the original image. For example, only a corner portion or a central area of the entire image may be printed. It is also desirable at times to rotate the image for printing in order to correct for camera tilt when the original exposure was made, or to better utilize the particular dimension of the printing paper on which the image is to be printed. For example, if an 11.times.14 inch print is to be made on 11 inch wide paper, it may be necessary to orient the negative so that its long dimension runs lengthwise of the paper. Thus the orientation of the negative (horizontal or vertical) would be aligned with or opposite to the orientation of the paper.